Of arts, culture and other random quirks of the mind

Author: thebitterbean

Books are dangerous things. I didn’t always know that. I used to think they were windows to other worlds, portals to my other selves. I used to get lost in books, thinking them innocent, benign things that brought knowledge, and more importantly – fun. I didn’t know that I wasn’t to be seen with them. So, I mingled with them in public spaces – walking down the street, sitting on a bus, in a classroom; in private places – in my bedroom, on the kitchen stoop, in the plum tree of my neighbour’s yard, hiding under the dining table so I could read without our being disturbed. But now I know. Books are dangerous. They must be. Why else would packages of books cause such suspicion going through customs? Surely there must be something to them other than words?

So, I’m heading off to a book festival, and yes, my carry on luggage is full of books. I prefer to put them there because I’ve seen what happens to checked luggage, and my books are too precious for me to risk that fate with all of them. To protect them on the journey, they have been swathed in bubblewrap. The suitcase goes through the scanner and the officer comes over. For a moment, I wonder if it is the comb I slipped in the suitcase at the last minute that has brought suspicion. I wasn’t sure it could go in my carry-on. It has a pointy end, after all, and certainly, it was the closest thing I had to a dangerous weapon. It might only be plastic, but if there is one thing The Walking Dead has taught me it’s that anything with a pointy end can be dangerous.

“Ma’am,” the officer says. “I have to open the bag.”

“Okay,” I say, wishing the stupid comb to hell.

“She say is only books she see in there, so I have to open it and check,” the officer continues. My ghast is flabbered.

She proceeds to open a few of the packages, checks that there really are only books in them then waves me on. Jamaica, I think. Only in this place would a woman going through customs with books attract suspicion.

But I would soon learn.

Now, I’m on my way back to Jamaica and am wending my way through the almost never-ending immigration line to have my bags and person scanned. I am pulled out of the line. It’s the books again. This time, the officer does not merely check a few. She rips apart all the packages, pulls out every single book and flips through the pages. I do not know what she is looking for? With each rough turn of a page, I feel a little more violated. I didn’t know travelling with books could cause so much suspicion. My anger boils, but I know better than to be rude to an immigration officer. Only a few weeks ago I had been at a seminar where they warned, don’t engage, don’t ask what they are looking for. Just let them look.

But she is handling the books too roughly, ripping at the protective padding I have layered them in to protect them on this journey.

“You’re crushing the books,” I tell her. It is all I can manage to say. My impotent anger is threatening to manifest as tears.

“Sorry ma’am,” she says. She is polite. Nothing about her behaviour tells me this is personal. It’s not her. It’s the books. They are suspicious. Then finally it dawns on me. Maybe it isn’t the books. Maybe it’s me. In this skin what business do I have travelling with books? After all, everyone knows that people like me do not read, so I must be trying to smuggle something other than words.

It is late Friday evening, March 13, 2015. The final rays of the sun struggle to get through the cloud of smoke that had wrapped around the city all day. Yet it came with no rainbow and it was unclear whether it was a bringer of hope or harbinger of worse things to come. The blanket of smoke, a gentle phrase for the cloud of toxins and carcinogens that had been belched from the flames engulfing Kingston’s dump, had already sent many behind their locked doors and masks. Several schools across the city had closed, and some children suffering from respiratory illnesses had to be taken to hospital.

It seemed most fitting that this fire had broken out on the heels of the start of the 2015 National Budget Debate, and our Minister of finance warned us to prepare for hard times, a statement that is only alarming because, well, if what we are currently experiencing is not hard times of Dickensian proportions, exactly what do they have planned for us? The Jamaican dollar is sliding so far and fast it seems to be trying for achieve ascendency and we really ought to change the term from ‘cost of living’ to ‘cost of not dying’.

Once again our revenue raising measures are about raising taxes, because it is a truth universally known that the best way to effect change is to keep doing the same thing over and again, because one day you will get a different result.

So, never mind that our environment is an actual goldmine that does not have to be sold off or destroyed in order to offer us great rewards. Never mind that our people deserve to live in a world where they can breathe freely. Never mind that we have much more to earn from the creative than the traditional sectors.

This latest fire at the Riverton dump had started on Wednesday afternoon. It is not the first, but certainly it has had the greatest impact. Yet we are a country of tragedies, and so, as clear as the smoke before our eyes is the truth that we will get over this. Not in the good way, which means we will learn from it and fix the problem, but rather that we will slap on a bandage to this latest gaping wound and move on. We will learn knew ways to cut and go through.

As the smoke continued to drift across the city, many called for answers and pointed to the issues of leadership and waste management that could have led to this. And it really is very easy to point accusing fingers at out inept leaders who are intent on out doing each other in how quickly they can completely ruin the economy while claiming to save it. And yes, the state of Riverton and these fires that threaten to engulf us are the result of ineptitude, and corruption and mismanagement.

But what is your/our responsibility in all this? How much of the garbage burning at Riverton comes from us? Why does proper recycling continue to elude us?

There was a time when we recycled out of necessity, plastic bottles were used and reused. Oil bottles became drink containers for work or school; boxes and bottle stoppers were turned into trucks and bread bags and newspaper into balls. But now plastic comes so easily and cheaply that we do not have to find ways of reusing it.

Plastic bottles choke this Kingston gully leading from the city to the sea

We are so keenly focused on this fire that we are not asking the larger questions about pollution in this city as we fast become the land of wood and begrimed water. Over the years our air has slowly blackened and much of it was spreading from around the dump, slowly creeping further into the city. An early morning journey down The Washington Boulevard will reveal air thick and brown.

As Friday wore on, many people posted images on social media, marveling at the hills and mountains they could not see. But maybe wrapped up in this smoke that threatens to steal our every breath there is some poetry. It might just be a metaphor for our need for vision and clarity.

Maybe this smoke that crept from the festering underbelly of the city, into the enclaves of the middle and upper classes (even those on the surrounding hills), into all nooks and would-be crannies, behind louvres and into fortressed bedroom windows because steel bars cannot keep this intruder out; maybe this smoke will clear our vision.

Louise Bennett creator of the character Auntie Roachie after whom the festival is named

Auntie Roachie Seh, man who don’t dead, don’t bury…

It was a Tuesday afternoon in what was arguably one of the hottest summers that Jamaica has faced, when spurred by an idea created by (as far as I’m aware) the current Principal Director of Culture, Dahlia Harris, a book fair was being staged as a part of Jamaica’s 52nd Independence Celebrations. Any idiot could realize the folly of this plan, because one fact everyone knows, from suckling babes to wizened and toothless crones, that Jamaicans don’t read. Yet there we were trying to stage a book fair, in the brilin sun hot, as the fair was slated to begin at noon. Worse yet, the fair was being staged at the Ranny Williams and Louise Bennet Entertainment complex on Hope Road, a space where audiences do not aimlessly wander by, but would have to deliberately make their way. It began to really appear improbable that even Louise Bennett duppy was a sufficiently potent spirit to bring people out.

I had taken off two of the hats I wore for this occasion, (that as representative of the Book Industry Association of Jamaica and member of the Imagine Dat planning team). and was setting up my tent. At minutes to 12pm as I looked around at the fellow exhibitors and the empty chairs left over from the last event in the same space, I began to wonder how I had been convinced to imbibe the urine of a crazy feline and participate in this event. I quickly realize that I needed to work on my apology for the panelists I had invited to participate i the lunch hour session where we were slated to have readings by Kerine Miller (Coop Clan) Roland Watson Grant (Skid and Sketcher), A-dZiko Simba Gegele (All Over Again) and Jean Lowrie Chin (Soul Dance) followed by a panel discussion where publisher and author Kellie Magnus and academic Dr. Michael Bucknor would join us. What on earth was I going to tell them when there was only two people in the audience. I wasn’t worried about Magnus who was not only my co-conspirator but had gotten me into this madness in the first place, but what would I tell the others. The only person I was sure was attending was Emma Lewis, my sister had half committed, and Tanya Shirley had said maybe. So if I were lucky, there would be 1 and 1/2 persons in the audience.

And then, a man walked into the venue. A few minutes later a woman and a young boy ventured in. By the time we got going the tent was almost filled with people and we managed to have a great reading and discussion. And though most of this audience left the venue at the end of the ‘Book Stew’ by 4pm when we resumed activities not only was the tent once again filled, but the audience had spilled over to the sides. My ghast was officially flabbered as I wondered if these people were not aware that it was a book event and so as card carrying Jamaicans they should not be there.

That being said, there are a few lessons from the day, that I would like to share. The majority of them actually came from the panelists as they spoke about what they believe is going right with Caribbean literature today.

Despite the days that it seems to argue the contrary, being a Caribbean publisher is not a case of tilting at windmills. First, the giants we seek to overcome are by no means imaginary, and secondly and more importantly, the giants are neither as big nor as scary as we imagine. Because if people can come out to a book event on a Tuesday afternoon, there is hope and yes, a few of them even bought books.

The new prizes being created in the Caribbean has created a more fertile soil for Caribbean writers. There are also more spaces that provide more succour for Caribbean writers and the effort is beginning to bear fruit, as with each day the names Kei Miller and Marlon James get more company as contemporary Jamaican writers.

Caribbean readers are buying more Caribbean books. It’s critical that we put our money where our mind is and Caribbean publishing can only thrive if people buy the books, and yes, people are likely to buy more books when there are good books for them to buy. So, if you want to see more Caribbean books, buy more Caribbean books. Let your wallet do the talking. If you go into a local bookstore and you cannot find the local books you want, ask for it, greater demand will allow local books to command better shelf space.

It wasn’t mentioned on Tuesday, but I would also have to give great credit to Bocas, who has been churning out some great prizes that has had significant impact.

Authors now have increased connectedness with potential readers and smart writers are using this. Social media has given everyone super stalking skills which can be used to our advantage as we can build communities that support our work.

Caribbean culture. One of the region’s greatest resource is its culture and we have barely begun to tap into it.

There is a space for bad poetry. I remain firmly committed to needing poetry in the poetry I consume, but as I listened to the audience get excited about some terrible verse, I realized that bad poetry is poetry too and it may have its use.

You. You can fill in the reason why, and if it is not yet the case, make it so.

And the most important lesson of all: Jamaican and Caribbean literature are not dead, so despite our love of fish and hard dough bread we need to stop having a ni night for it. We need to create great books that people want to read and invite audiences to come out and engage with them. The Auntie Roachie Festival was a declarative statement, now let’s hope we were listening.

Tessanne winner of The Voice Season 5 and decimater of glad bags all over Jamaica

I need a new ‘glad bag’ that mobile vessel in which we Jamaicans store our joy, because on Tuesday December 17, 2013, when Tessanne was declared the winner of The Voice (Season 5) my old glad bag exploded, shattering into pieces to small they could never be put back together again. Since her first arrival on the Voice stage in September, I had felt a personal investment in her success that surprised me and I was hard-pressed to explain. While I have long been a fan of her work the level of elation I felt during that initial performance floored me.

Jamaicans are constantly in search of new cartographers, talents that shine so bright they can put us on the world map, keeping us from the ignominy of being from “the islands mon”, a space many tourists have been, to but we Caribbean people do not inhabit. So Tessanne’s rise allowed us to once again thump well-puffed chests with pride and declare, ‘Yeah man, Tessanne put we pon di map!”. Saying yes, despite the sliding dollar, the shenanigans of our wayward politicians, the continued need for burglar bars, another Jamaican has made us larger than our geographic boundaries. She had ended ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ with a note that could have powered Superman’s journey around the world the reverse time, and delivered a magical rendition of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Have Nothing’ that is sure to be rinsed in Jamaican Dancehalls for years to come because every good ‘gun chune’ deserves and even better love song.

Tessanne performs with her sister and fellow singer Tammy Chynn

Of course, by now some politician and or civil servant is running about doing the headless chicken dance, asking “So what about Brand Jamaica? What are we doing about Brand Jamaica?” In the past three months Tessanne has provided the country with more positive and meaningful promotion that our national coffers could afford. So we raised her to our shoulders, lifting her up along with Usain Bolt, Shelly Ann Fraser Pryce. Jamaicans expressed their joy on the streets and online to campaign for her, and woe be unto any who dared to badmouth her, or even suggest that another of the contestants should take the title. Christina Aguilera was soon dubbed Queen of Badmind and when after the first night of the finals Jennifer Hudson declared she would be voting for Jacqui Lee, her Facebook Page felt their wrath.

Of course, the fact that Jamaicans aught not have the right to vote did not stop them from trying to find ways to screechie through or jump over the rules, or at least make sure that every Jamaican in the Diaspora who ever wanted to taste rice and peas with coconut milk or sorrel or jerk chicken on home soil again, voted in their stead. But in truth, at the end of the day, given the restrictions, as much as Jamaicans (and other Caribbean nationals supported Tessanne) it was really America that declared her the winner.

Tessanne and hubby, Michael Anthony Cuff Jr

Yet, in those moments of Tessanne’s performance, what I felt wasn’t national pride. I wasn’t elated because a Jamaican was on a top-rated show on American television and making us all look good. I was happy because she had found a stage the size of which she deserved and had been trying to reach for well over a decade. Viewership of the premiere show stood at 14 Million people, almost twice the population of the entire English-Speaking Caribbean, not to mention Jamaica’s comparably minuscule population of 2.7 Million. Finally, I thought the world (and no I am not limiting the world to America) will get a chance to hear this woman who is able to deliver haunting melodies, pitch perfect notes, has amazing timing and the audacity to be a charming and endearing person without being remotely cloying. In truth, if I could muster the will to badmind her, I would.

Tessanne goofs around during a rehearsal with fellow performers Abijah and Eye-Eye during a cultural exchange between Jamaica and Japan

So, in the glow brought on by Tessanne’s success, despite how tempting it is, we should not ignore how we have fallen short in creating a spring board for Jamaica’s creative output and our creative economy. Since Tessanne’s first appearance on The Voice in September this year, there has been a heavy spate of unrequited love brewing. Not the one that DuttyBerry had us all giggling at – that of the Tess and the Tessless (cue soap opera music) but rather the Voice(d) and the Voiceless.

Tessanne Performs with Diana King at an intimate concert in 2007

Tessanne’s journey to this mantle was not a 12 week one. As she revealed in interviews, she decided to take the opportunity because she had reached the point in her career where she felt she was growing stagnant. Between 2001 and the present, she had performed on several major stages in Jamaica, had launched an album put into the work to stage her own concerts. She was clearly willing to put in the grueling work it takes to rise in the music business. Nonetheless, by 2013 she felt it was a do or die moment for her. Without her decision to take this chance which has bourn such glittering fruit, we would have lost this voice.

Every so often, a bit of her persona now dubbed ‘Chinita-Goodas’ creeps into Tessanne’s performances

We Jamaicans love to pat ourselves on the back as we yell just how talented we are. Yes we are the land of wood, ganja and talented people. But how much are we doing for those talents? Talent is not enough, it is more than high time that the music industry seeks to remedy the areas in which it falls short, because although the powers that be may continue to ask, ‘What are we doing about Brand Jamaica?’ they have no answer. Even when they attempt to answer it, they seemed to have been confused by the question. It is more than a little ironic, that earlier this year, when the government staged an Arts in the Park concert to showcase local talent R&D scouts and agents from the United States, Tessanne, one of the two females on the show, had been squeezed up among the “filler talents” almost seemingly added to the roster as an afterthought. As I said, in an article at the time, it was a “glaring indictment” on either the organizers of the show or the industry as a whole, that such a talent was not being properly showcased.

Tessanne at Arts in the Park 2013, one of her most recent major performance in Jamaica

But fortunately, the host of the same Arts in the Park event, Shaggy, advised her to try out for The Voice. There is no question that Tessanne is now finally on a path to greater things and will be able to do what her coach Adam Levine advised, and not ask ‘What’s next’ but to simply answer the question.

But we too must answer ‘What’s next?’ How will we make this inspiring journey more than a passing opportunity to indulge in twitter frenzies and knock pot covers and blow zuzuvelas. How shall the others of us chart new courses to pursue our dreams, and sing new songs in this no longer (e)strange(d) land.

Post Script:
Damian Marley, I’ve said it already, but I’m repeating, would really love to have a duet between you two. And yes, I have it on very good authority that Tessanne wants it too.

I don’t like the cold! I can’t handle it and there are parts of me that crave the disorder, that like living in a place where bomboclaat means something. But let’s face it. Jamaica is in trouble. Big trouble. I’ve seen in my twitter timeline where people are casually placing bets about where the Jamaican dollar will be by the end of the year. This idea unwomans me. It makes the Jamaican in me, the tendency to take kin teet and kibba heart bun, quail up and hide. I’m a struggling business woman, if the dollar reaches J$125 – US$1 my entire livelihood becomes unfeasible. But I don’t like the cold. I can’t migrate and truthfully, I don’t want to because … because … because I love this “bruk-spirit kiss mi ass place”.

In the wake of Tessanne’s fantastic performance on NBC’s The Voice, the phrase ‘bread and butta’ has gained remarkable traction in the last few days. In a land where more and more people will have to turn to dumplin and butta (because we can’t afford oxtail or any other ‘meat-kind’) the timing is perfect. Jamaica needs to tap into the resources that can allow it to not merely get out of poverty, but facilitate wealth creation for its people.

So we are told that we cannot afford to trade the possibility of sustenance, of “bread and butta” for “two likkle lizard” and some non-existent goats on an island. The trouble is we are all goats on this island. Or maybe we are sheep, mindlessly bleating and doing nothing to change our direction as we walk toward the cliff heedless of the fall ahead.

And the fall is coming. Actually, it’s already here.

So never mind the fact that the Chinese have a woeful environmental track-record in their own country as well as other places they have been. I mean if you’ve driven from Kingston to Spanish Town in the early morning recently, you can see that thick brown smog, you can even smell it as it lingers in the air, hovering near Duhaney Park and slowly drifting further and further up the Boulevard. So the environment done mash up already, and soon the two tourists we still have will notice it.

So never mind, that already we cannot manage the current level of damage from storm-surges, muchless when we kill off the remaining reefs (one of the island’s most extensive of which is in the Portland Bight area). Or that no, there are no longer so many fish in the sea and the Portland Bight was supposed to provide protection for them.

Never mind that the Portland Bight (which includes the Hellshire Hills) is actually a protected site as agreed in an international convention, and more importantly that it is home to several endemic species and is used by manatees, turtles and numerous birds and has the island’s largest fish nursery, which means that the destruction of the mangroves will literally translate to the fishermen’s fishpot ketching trash.

Because, in truth, what other option do we have? Sugar, Bananas, Cocoa, Coffee none of these agricultural products offer the route to cash they once did, and we now grow more town houses than any other crop. Manufacturing is a bust, tourism is not quite cutting it, and with the global economic downturn, the remittance industry is in now more in tamarind season than its salad days.

So what else is the government to do? It has no other option but to sell the natural resources to the highest bidder, hide its head in the nearest sand dune and pretend that Jamaican people have a direct line to the Lord and can turn back any hurricane with prayer.

Oh wait …

Maybe there are options. Maybe we could stop the bleating and bleeping and invest in the creative industries. The copyright sectors have already proven themselves, with little or no support. Up to 2005, Copyright sectors provided 4.8% of the country’s GDP and employed approximately 3% of the population. Heck the importance of its development is even in Vision 2030 but then, that’s a piece of paper you can’t even take to the bathroom muchless the bank.

So, despite the potential of these industries that require less formal education, thrive with small businesses, provide high levels of employment and pay higher rates, the creative sector remains on life support. The in flow of films have moved from a gush to a trickle to occasional drops, so much so that the film community made themselves a video calling out the government for its lack of support. (Link to the video below)

And they shouldn’t be doing this alone. The country’s future rests with film, with music, with theatre, with ICTs, with sports, with publishing with art, with fashion and design all of which feed into the other sectors including tourism, manufacturing, hair dressing agriculture, and numerous others. Alas, even while our fields lie fallow, we still a “farm fool” and we look on while the UK builds rebuilds its economy with creative cities, while numerous others tap into the growth potential of the creative economy.

Through the creative industries we can skank our way to prosperity. Bob Marley seh so, Usain Bolt seh so, and when she done win The Voice, Tessanne going to seh so.

Rather than speculate on the possible manna that can fall from the table of the Chinese, we need to be building our own routes to bread, butter and curried goat.

And maybe, maybe I think that this is all possible because well … I don’t like the cold, and so help me, I still love this “bruk-spirit kiss mi ass place”.

I’ve come to accept that idiocy is my portion. I mean, what other than idiocy, or a particularly potent batch of lunacy would convince me to leave full-time employ and pursue publishing? Additionally, I’m not even smart enough to be publishing academic texts, I’m publishing poetry and fiction. Every puss, fowl and them friend can tell you Jamaicans don’t read. Unfortunately, some one forgot to tell the children who partici

pated in the Kingston Book Fest Behind the Book Tour, because when they were let loose in Bookland (New Kingston) they behaved as though they were in Candyland.

As I and my fellow KBF organizers watched the 28 excited children go through the selection of books, selecting ones to peruse and often going off to pay for their ultimate choice, I felt vindicated in my bout of madness because maybe it isn’t a given that Jamaica

ns don’t read, maybe we have simply bought into this lie for so long that we refuse to do anything about it. Watching people at the Kingston Book Fair made me feel even more certain about this, because if Jamaicans don’t read, why were there so many people at the fair and why were they walking away with bags with books in them – books they had bought?

As the Jamaican dollar skanks its way further down the pole of insignificance, what we should realize is that in not stimulating a reading culture, we have been deliberately under-developing the country. Our education policies encourage functional literacy, not reading as a way for developing critical thinking, because if this country blossomed into critical thinkers than our pork barrel tactics would be overturned.

Somebody should tell these girls that Jamaicans don’t read!

When we say Jamaicans don’t read, we say it as though in other countries, readers are just born not bred, and it is merely the inherent “wutlessness” of Jamaicans that have kept them from reading. Thanks to the arrival of Calabash, the reading landscape experienced some significant changes over the past decade, but as yet, it is certainly not enough.What I firmly believe is that if we want our country to change, one of the fundamental things we must encourage is greater levels of critical thinking, and while it is not the only tool to do this, books are an excellent avenue.

A part of the problem is that in the main, due to the ‘Jamaicans don’t read’ label, much of the output from Caribbean publishers and publishers of Caribbean content, has been geared at the education system. So the booklist game is bread and meat of the publisher especially in this landscape. Most of the Caribbean books many of us read, were only encountered there, and once a book has reached the promised land of the book list, it hangs on for as long as it can, because once it falls off, it falls into the abyss of forgetting.

Yet there is an underlying problem with most Caribbean works of fiction, the majority of which are published by the same few British publishing houses, are only seen with the tarnish of the “school book”.

I remember receiving a copy of Oliver Twist and Green Days By the River for my thirteenth birthday. I read and enjoyed both books, but at the end of the summer when we returned to school and discovered that Green Days By the River was on that year’s booklist, I felt betrayed. How could my mother have given me a “school book” for my birthday present? Did she not know what section of the store she was in? Never mind that I had enjoyed it, I now knew that it was not a thing for pleasure but for learning.

One of the other events of the Kingston Book Festival was to tour of three schools, Ardenne High, Campion College and Mico with writers, editors and publishers. The team included Kei Miller, Diane Brown, Latoya West Blackwood, Roland Watson-Grant and Dennis Chung. They spoke to the students about their careers as well as about the kinds of books they wanted to read. It was revelatory, especially at highlighting that there is a good untapped market of young readers out there who are interested in getting content they can relate to and content which isn’t appearing on their curricula.

What was also clear, is that in leaving these students with only the choice of foreign literature to sate their reading for pleasure, we are encouraging an amazing loss of identity. So the truth is, whether or not Jamaicans don’t read, isn’t merely about encouraging a love of books. It is relevant to this country’s struggling economy, it is relevant to this country’s increasing loss of identity.

Let’s face it, whether or not the revolution is televised, there should be a book, electronic or otherwise, about it. It is high time we booked a revolution.

The year is not so new anymore and the haze of new year celebrations and resolutions begin to pale. 2012 was an important year in Jamaica’s history, at least symbolically, as the nation turned 50. But at the end of it, it seems Jamaica 50 made any difference, nothing of lasting value was created and so a year later we are no better. We started Jamaica 50 under a new government and what their first year returned to rule has underscored is that regardless of party, Jamaica remains prey to bungled governance which sabotages our potential and leaves us wallowing in economic morass.

I recently read a post by fellow blogger Annie Paul, on her Active Voice site, titled ‘Cauterizing Jamaica’s Debt Wound’ in which Paul extensively quotes The Chicago Tribunestory ‘Jamaica’s Debt Hurricane’. Reading the article reminded me of the first time I heard Bounti Killer’s ‘Anytime’ – as though someone had taken a cold, sharp knife and sliced away the veneer I tried desperately to hold on to, leaving me vulnerable and exposed. There was an unflinching truth which summed up so much of my concerns for this would-be-paradise if only we could afford it.

“The Caribbean nation actually is in worse financial shape than Greece: Jamaica has more debt in relation to the size of its economy than any other country. It pays more in interest than any other country. It has tried to restructure its loans to stretch them out over more years, at lower interest rates, with no success… Jamaica is caught in a debt trap. More than half of its government spending goes to service its loans. The country can spend barely 20 percent of its budget for desperately needed health and education programs. Its infrastructure is faltering. It lacks resources to fight crime. It has little margin to recover from natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy.”

The report isn’t exactly surprising, but still the starkness is unsettling, because it makes it hard to hide from the facts. I have been consumed by thoughts on whether Jamaica’s economic fate can change. I do not understand it and not merely because math and anything numeric confounds me, but because in many ways Jamaica doesn’t look like a 3rd world country (or at least not what television tells me a third world country should look like). I know there is pervasive poverty here. The kind that gnaws at you and you cannot romanticize. So I’m not sure what accounts for this discrepancy. The question continues to gnaw at me as I’m driving down Oxford Road looking at the new building by ATL Autohaus and wondering how we can afford so many Audis and Volkswagens if we are so poor. How does a country with so much a poverty and debt manage to live like this?

The ill-formed conclusion I have come to is that while it is easy for us to blame the government for our situation, and they are responsible for so much of what is wrong with this country, the way that we live, the continued foreign-mindedness and absence of sufficient social conscience impacts on the economy. So while I have not really made any resolutions for the new year, I am resolved.
I resolve to explore how far the mickle-muckle theory can stretch. Those of us who believe that change can come must find ways to do this. As I have said before, Canada is cold and they won’t take us all anyway, even though your average middle-class Jamaican is now a Canadian-in-waiting. As Buju said, “who can afford to run will run/ but what about those who can’t/ they will have to stay…”

Jamaica remains in a perilous situation of life and debt. It has been this year for a long time. But it has to change. It isn’t merely that if it doesn’t something will have to give – that has already begun as the society crumbles around us and the blood rises in the streets. I am tired of talking about our potential. It needs to stop being idle chatter and become a reality.